Tom Coburn: “I would just ask the gentlewoman from Michigan to look at the experience in Kansas. Every one of the partial birth…”

“I would just ask the gentlewoman from Michigan to look at the experience in Kansas. Every one of the partial birth abortions that have been provided for this year have been on the basis of the health exception. A health exception for the woman. Eight of them from Kansas, seven or eight from Kansas, the rest from outside of Kansas but on a health exception. Very few of those were based on the physical health of the woman, but on the fact that she did not want to have a baby. Now, I understand that in our country that is okay. That is legal today. I want to make one other point, that we sometimes forget. Why is partial-birth abortion out there? Because if you abort a baby a different way, guess what? The baby is born alive. When the baby is born alive in most States if it is at viability, then you have to express the will of the State to do everything you can to keep that child alive. So we abort a baby, have a baby that is viable, and then we work to keep it alive because that is what the States say we must do. So partial-birth abortion is developed so you deliver a dead baby. That is why it is there, so you get around this idea that it is alive. Again, I would remind the vast majority, upwards of 90 percent of all partial-birth abortions are on absolutely normal babies. Normal. Not abnormal. I have delivered tons of abnormal children. I have dealt with every consequence associated with terrible errors in reproduction. They are tragedies.”